Ignore that I spelled “the” incorrectly. Doesn’t even matter. Minor detail. Crushed it. Also, Matt Klentak, you beautiful son of a bitch. You dog, you. I knew you had it in you. Swing it around like a windmill, Howie-style. I want to give you a noogie.

A day after Lance Lynn signed with the Twins for a modest one-year deal worth $12 million, now comes the news that the market’s prized free agent starting pitcher is headed to Philadelphia to help make baseball relevant in this city once again.

Arrieta’s performance has declined over the past two years, but he was still productive in 2017, posting a 14-10 record with a 3.53 ERA and 163 strikeouts over 168.1 innings.

Arrieta solidifies a rotation in desperate need of a top arm to pair with Aaron Nola. His production, big game experience and highly regarded work ethic should prove beneficial to a young rotation and could push the Phillies into playoff contention in a top-heavy National League that is wide open beyond Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The best part? The move doesn’t preclude the Phillies from future action. It’s irrelevant. They have a shit load of cash to spend when 2019’s much anticipated free agency class rolls around. I feel, I don’t know, strong. Let us go forth and do wild card things. Baseball is BACK!

So bold.

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Bob Wankel covers the Phillies, breaking news, and sports gambling for Crossing Broad. He is also a producer and co-host of Crossed Up: A Phillies Podcast.
A South Jersey resident and graduate of Monmouth University, his past work includes six seasons as a freelance producer at NFL Films.
On Twitter: @BWCrossingbroad
E-mail: Bob@crossingbroad.com

19 Comments

This makes absolutely no fuckimg sense, personnel wise or fiscally. Untested mgr with little to no clubhouse experience. Marginal to poor personnel roster. Maybe the Phillies are desperate because of the GM’s poor fucking personnel management and neediness in axing a baseball lifer, loyal to thevorganization to a fault, for a guy that would make him feel better. No fucking sense

Or maybe McFail ordered this to keep the owners happy because they saw little revenue from the box office forthcoming.

Arrieta is a good pitcher, no question. It just makes no fuckimg sense for Philadelphia to sign him. And why Arrieta would want to come to a mess like Philadelphia (except money, of course) is fucking baffling.

9.96, staff Chills…. Incredible reporting, make some shelf space for your Pulitzer…. you guessed the contract terms 3 HOURS before they were announced!?!?! I mean, guessing 3 years (the options were endless…. there are an infinite amount of numbers) and $25mm per for a high quality starting pitcher…. Elon Musk likely on your other line and Kyle is likely to lose another high quality, genius member of his “staff”…. imagine if you, as a LOCAL guy primarily focusing on one team actually broke the story?!?! Imagine if you worked for an actual sports site and not a t-shirt portal that reposts other folks work! Congrats!

Actually, gotta be honest. Guessing the exact terms of the deal before he was signed is pretty good. There’s lots of numbers in the universe, right? Like an infinite amount. So, to guess the number of years and then dollar amount is pretty good. What this does is show that I understand market evolution. So while I appreciate the 7 minutes it took to write this 105 word response, and your frequent visits to the site, I’m gonna go ahead and say, yeah, it’s kind of a good job by me. If I had to give you a douche chills meter, I’d roll solid 10–just for the fact you tried so hard, but I’m going to stay at a 9 because you help me by reading. Anyway, thanks for reading. Good luck being angry online.

Wow, you really put me in my place…. I don’t know what I was thinking writing something like that to such a sophisticated journalist. Can you keep us posted on other exciting predictions you might have? Will he also be flying in for the contract announcement or do you think they’ll bus him in? In terms of numbers (because you’re so good at them and the possibilities are infinite), do you think he’ll be one of their top three starters (I know you like the number three)? Also, any chance he’ll wear a home, away, and alt uniform (so again- numbers, your strength- three uniforms) or did Kyle come up with an original design of white with red pinstripes, grey with red/white, and red/white/blue that that he’ll soon be selling from the site to the team (no copyright infringement, it’s a slightly different shade of red and, hey- MLB didn’t invent those colors anyway). Finally, did you take a break from t-shirt packing to write back?

It’s ok man–if you really want to write for the site just send Kyle a writing sample. No need to lash out at the current writers. Also, if you have a lot of time on your hands (which appears to be the case) we could use more help packing t shirts

Plenty of time on a low key Sunday night to highlight the worthless nature of this site and the bad taste it purveys all in the name of “clicks and t-shirt money”…. how about you “Doc”? 9:42am on a Monday morning? You seem like a real overachiever. Keep going with the solid business plan…. Copyright infringement, Cut/Paste/Click, Push/Spread innuendo…. repeat.

Chad DurbinMarch 11, 2018 at 6:44 pm

I had Jake on my fantasy baseball team last year and killed me . Was god awful the 1st half of the season